Tonight at the dinner table I remembered this old joke. My children and I had a good laugh. I hope it gives you a smile. (hint: read it out loud)

ABCD Fishies
A! MNO Fishies
OSMR!
CDEDBDI’s

Happy New Year!

I have been asked what resources I am using to learn CSS. A Lynda.com membership is the main source and has been very helpful. The process has been really frustrating because there is so much basic CSS knowledge that you need before any of it makes sense. I watched the Dreamweaver CS4 videos several times gaining just a little bit from each pass. Then I built a (very basic) functioning website using an external CSS style sheet. It was a frustrating challenge, but with CSS it is so cool. When I make a change to the CSS style sheet all of the pages in the site are updated. For example, you can update type color site wide. It is like paragraph and character styles in InDesign.

But typography is not the place to start learning CSS. Start with the concept of “div tags”. If you are new to CSS, I know that this means nothing to you but it is the foundation for CSS in Dreamweaver. It is the first major concept that I had to know. (I have used tables in the past to design web pages and, “div tags” are not like tables.)

Once again, start with “div tags” not typography.

As you may notice my blog is in various forms of disarray. I am trying to learn how to customize it with css. Please be patient with me. Who knows, it might just be interesting to watch me fumble around.

Three of the four ukulele bridges popped off with the strings tuned and tightened. I designed a new bridge that gave a larger gluing area. Then one of the ukes was bumped off a shelf and the neck broke off. I fixed that one this morning and after a day of drying time I will restring it.

Even with all of the mishaps the ukes have been worth the work. Last night we spent some time with the kids playing them and had a great fun. They are picking it up very quickly.

I am learning CSS for designing web sites and made progress. I will probably change my web site for practice and to make it easier to maintain.

Sproing!

What a terrible sound but I heard it three times yesterday. After applying all of my physics mental capacity I think that I have a solution.

I will let you know as soon as I know if it works.

The morning was wonderful and the kids liked the cigar box ukuleles that I made for each of them. Here are some photos.

(click images to enlarge)

This year our family is making our gifts that we are giving to each other. It has been really quite fun. I have been working on mine for several weeks. It is not right to post to the world before Christmas day, but I will give a few hints. It is made of plywood & paper and no tobacco was used in the production process.

I will get some photos up as soon as I can.

I am experimenting with creating some video tutorials. Please let me know what you think.